Fair-sized spiders in their own right, standard issue lichen huntsmen are masters of camouflage that hide in plain sight and shimmy to unreachable heights when betrayed by their eyeshine at night. They are creatures of habit, however, and are likely to be found at their original spots after a few minutes of silence. It's a wonder how they spy and secure flighty prey in the dark, but still they do, although land shrimp in their shiny armour are left well alone for some reason.
This hairy beast, however, was impossible to miss, even in the damp shadows of a mid-morning walk by Sungei Tua. With a legspan a mere inch or two short of a foot, the spider, probably Heteropoda boiei, is a likely contender in size with a troglodytic cousin in Laos. The habitat was a disturbed primary forest that still harboured a canopy rich enough to be haunted by operatic gibbons. This huntsman occurs in Borneo as well, it seems, but no record exists, alas, for the species in Singapore, where there are probably not enough big trees and robust prey to sustain a population of large, latigrade stalkers in lucid green and blotchy brown.
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